“Intelligence summary, sir. Data comes from flybys this afternoon and earlier tonight.”

  Jon skipped the photos and paged to the final paragraph of the typed report.

  He read aloud, “In summary, Battle Damage Assessments indicate the enemy suffered substantial losses to core ground units including the elimination of one Leviathan. Furthermore, precision strikes by air combat group Dasher on secondary targets resulted in a thirty-five percent reduction in munitions production as well as a forty-five percent reduction in farming facilities. Intelligence estimates a minimum of three days will be required for the opposing force to affect repairs to munitions production and a minimum of seven days to re-constitute destroyed and damaged farms with subsequent crop yields anticipated no sooner than June 22 ^ nd.”

  Jon allowed the hint of a smile to tug at the corner of his lips.

  “At this time, enemy resources are focused on re-constituting air defenses in preparation for additional aerial incursions. Reconnaissance indicates an increase in AA batteries by a magnitude of three compared to pre-strike levels.”

  “Jesus,” Dunston muttered. “We won’t be able to get near them again with that kind of flak.” The pilot thought about that for a moment and conceded, “Then again, we only got a handful of planes left, anyway.”

  Jon pulled his eyes away from the report and agreed with the caveat, “True, but Voggoth doesn’t know that. Point is, with his farms beat up this bad that means every defensive Spook he builds is one less Sentry or Chariot or other ground weapon he can use to hit us on the Mississippi.”

  The general continued reading and found that, like most intelligence reports these days, this one had offered the good news first as if apologizing in advance for the bad.

  “Auxiliary enemy forces are now moving to the muster zone at Excelsior Springs to compensate for reduced farming capacity and lost core units. These auxiliary units are typically employed for mop-up or terror operations and hence have a lower offensive capability. However, observations suggest the entirety of such auxiliary forces west of the Mississippi are redeploying to Excelsior Springs. An estimate of numerical strength at this time would prove inaccurate but military planners should expect the enemy force to be similar to pre-Operation Baseplate numbers within 7 to 14 days.”

  Jon let the report drop.

  Dunston asked, “What do you think all that will end up meaning, General?”

  Jon eased in his chair and relaxed with the feeling of a death row inmate earning a stay of execution albeit at the expense of a final, hopeless appeal. The day of reckoning would still come, but Operation Baseplate purchased more of the valuable commodity known as time.

  “It means we bought ourselves a week. Maybe two. The Geryons have stopped moving south and the Centurians have stopped marching north. Wherever the Chaktaw are, they’ve stopped marching too, I’ll bet. They won’t hit us until Voggoth hits us.”

  “But what does that mean for us?”

  “More time to prepare,” although Jon knew that also meant more time for his demoralized army to disintegrate from fighting machine to rabble. “It also means we’re going to face more of the little guys like Roachbots, Mutants, and monsters and less of Voggoth’s heavy stuff when he does come knocking on the Mississippi.”

  Jon knew those words sounded encouraging, as long as Dunston had not really examined the Intel photos. The volume of Wraiths, Mutants, mutated Feranites, and Roachbots leaving their raiding territories to join the main army was alarming, to say the least. Once they assembled they would become an army nearly as numerous as the units they replaced, albeit not quite as well-honed for large-scale battle. Yet as long as the Leviathans figured into the equation Jon guessed that made little difference.

  “Do we have a fighting chance now, sir?”

  Jon thought not about the unstoppable onslaught destined to smash into the Mississippi, but about Trevor and his son somewhere on the other side of the world and answered, “Yes.”

  Like a Frisbee, the device spun through the dark corridors of the Sysco complex. On top of the spinning disk rested a box of wires and veins sporting two eye-like lights surveying the space below.

  The Bishop saw what the flying drone saw via a display set in a wall of green paste and supported by metallic ribs that bent gently with the domed shape of the chamber. That display more resembled the warped mirrors of a fun house than a video screen but the picture came through clear enough, causing a flicker of light through the wide round room.

  The surveillance drone relayed images of Voggoth’s slaughtered children: a monk in a corner near an open door; two of his expert Commandos reduced to sparking heaps behind an overturned desk in a supervisor’s office-turned-ambush point.

  But no sign of their attacker.

  The body of a young man who had been turned into a Missionary hovered at the Bishop’s side and listened as his master extrapolated from the trail of bodies, “She is moving toward the fuel depot. Toward me.”

  “I shall send our forces to intercept.”

  “Which forces are those?”

  The Missionary man glanced toward the skin-like door leading away from the Bishop’s refuge. Outside, in a wide corridor and surrounding office-space, waited some 100 monks and a pair of the brutish Ogres.

  “No,” the Bishop read the Missionary’s intention. “We transferred the bulk of the garrison to Excelsior Springs. They are all that remains to guard this sanctuary,” by that, the Bishop most certainly meant himself. “You will go, personally, and use the tools with which Voggoth has blessed you. Intercept her at the entrance to the depot.”

  The Missionary man hesitated.

  The Bishop glared in disdain for what remained of the human instinct for self-preservation inside Voggoth’s vessel. The Missionary relented and retreated from the room.

  At one time the warehouse housed frozen foods in a freezer hundreds of feet long and thirty yards wide. In those days a massive cooling system maintained a frigid temperature to keep everything from chicken tenders sticks to ice cream bars in stasis while waiting to be shipped across the Midwest to restaurants and cafeterias.

  That time had long past, but The Order found new use for the gigantic freezer, albeit with a temperature much warmer and humid than before.

  Growths of dark green and brown covered the concrete floor in something akin to a shaggy carpet and continued up the tall walls on either side in a kind of otherworldly ivy. A handful of luminous bulbs sprouted from buds mixed in with the ivy creating starlight specks from the upper reaches of the terraformed walls.

  The young Missionary man walked along the wide, open, and dimly lit warehouse aware the enemy might lurk in one shadow or another. And while he did not fear death, he did fear the wrath of Voggoth. Of course fear was an emotion useless to the machinations of The Order except when utilized as a weapon. Inside the converts to Voggoth’s legions, that remaining trace of humanity served as a detestable obstacle to purity.

  Along the walls of the frozen foods section of Sysco-Olathe stood a dozen vats twenty feet high constructed by Voggoth’s engineers. The bloated containers pulsed and gurgled with the occasional hiss of a what might be considered steam.

  Thick hoses traveled from the top of each vat into the ceiling high overhead, then across that roof where they met at a solitary sphere. From there fuel traveled topside for collection by passing Chariots.

  Chunks of charcoal gelatin surrounded the base of each vat, spilling out on the otherwise flat and vacant center of the huge chamber.

  The Missionary man passed the array with his eyes darting from side to side, waiting for the predator to pounce.

  She did not. Instead, Voggoth’s convert reached the southern opening of the gigantic freezer. A particularly thick membrane dotted with tiny purple and red veins withdrew and he stepped into a wide passage running east to west in front of the bulkhead.

  The thing that had once been human pulled two small balls from the pockets of his black jacket and dropped them to the floor. The balls expanded as if filling with gas until reaching the size of a beach ball. Then the spindly legs of Spider Sentries poked out from the spheres, followed by the sharp pointed nose of their jagged skewers and the rows of barrels across their ungodly faces.

  The Missionary-flanked by the Spider Sentries-stood and waited. His eyes ran east up the hall. Doors lined the corridor there, some open and leading to dark passages; others closed tight, all tainted by the spread of sickly ivy.

  His eyes ran west to a t-section where a garage door stood shut and corridors led off to other parts of the complex. No movement there, either.

  A noise grabbed his attention; a sliding noise. Something scurried along the concrete floor directly for his feet.

  The Missionary jumped back a step, bumping into the heavy membrane protecting access to the depot. His eyes darted to the floor in front of him where he saw some kind of backpack; something thrown across the floor at his position.

  The Missionary reacted faster than the Spider Sentries. In a moment’s time he re-traced the flight of the backpack to one of the dark doorways to the east. His new eyes-accustomed to the dim lighting of Voggoth’s den-saw the silhouette of the enemy stooped low by one of those doors.

  He raised his arm to command the sentries to assault.

  The detpack at his feet exploded.

  A volcano of concrete erupted form the floor and radiated outward turning the Missionary into a blob of gore and ripping the legs off the Spider Sentries. Their ball-shaped heads flew away and shredded apart in layers like peeled onions. Their charred remains came to rest dozens of feet away from the blast zone.

  Most important to Nina, the explosion tore a hole in the bulkhead.

  With her Colt M4 pointed ahead, she hurried across the hall, stepped carefully around the blob of gore on the floor, and moved into the vast darkness of the old freezer chamber.

  There she met the constant, rhythmic glug and hiss of the vats converting raw nutrients into fuel. A whining noise drew her attention from the vats lining the chamber to something overhead. There she saw two eye-like lights fixed to a spinning disk.

  She took aim with her rifle and fired. The drone zigzagged to avoid the shots and circled high into the darkened rafters.

  Nina tried to track its movements, but a more immediate concern grabbed her attention: a chorus of electronic hums from the far side of the chamber. She watched as pinpricks of yellow formed over there like a cloud of angry gnats. That cloud turned into a storm streaming across the open space at her, fast and then faster; loud and then louder.

  Nina raised her weapon and fired.

  One of the yellow balls exploded in a shower of liquid that engulfed another of its number. Both flickered dark. The rest kept coming.

  Nina instinctively retreated a step, and then two, but her eyes remained fixed on the approaching targets.

  She fired again.

  One of fourteen disappeared.

  She fired a three-round burst.

  Two misses-one hit.

  Louder; close enough now that she could see the tiny licks of flame-light dancing on the surface of the sun-like glowing balls.

  Another-another-another dropped to her shots, but time ran out.

  Nina switched to full automatic on her rifle and met the storm with a storm of her own. Quantity over quality; metal against burning acid.

  Three more of the glowing projectiles exploded into mists of acid. Where every drop of spilt acid fell, puffs of smoke sizzled form the mesh-covered floor.

  Nina ran toward the side of the complex. The six pursuers changed course not so much in a straight line, but sluggishly as if in battle with their own momentum.

  She switched out her magazine while in the midst of a full sprint. The glowing spheres screamed their electronic hum just over her shoulder. Nina dove-straight to the floor into the soft surface of intertwined vines. The balls of acid swooped over her prone back by the nearest of margins, flew forward, and tried to turn for a second pass but another could not stifle speed fast enough and hit into a gurgling vat of fuel. Its corrosive juices splashed on the vile barrel but did not breach the container. Plumes of steam carried toward the ceiling and Nina felt sure she heard the container moan.

  Nina knelt and fired at full automatic again. The barrel of her gun created flashes like fireworks bouncing off the green walls. Her shots down two more enemies. A splash from one dropped on the shoulder pads of her body armor at the same time as she rolled to her right to avoid the remaining trio of attackers: they over shot again.

  Nina took to her feet and ran toward the wounded vat; one in a line of such vats along the eastern wall. She felt heat radiating from her shoulder; digging through the padding to find its way to flesh. Behind her the electronic screams grew louder yet again as the hunters sought the target.

  With one hand holding her weapon, the other struggled with the smoking body armor. She pulled one arm free then reached the vats, pressing into the small space between the hideous containers and the infected wall.

  The missiles altered course away from the vats, not daring to hit another of their own, and circled higher toward the rafters like dive bombers re-positioning for another attack run.

  Nina used the momentary respite to remove the remains of her damaged armor taking care to not touch the noxious surface of Voggoth’s machinery. The horrid, decaying smell forced a wretch in her stomach but she remained focused on the task. No distractions could dissuade her. No horrors here could intimidate her. Nina had become a weapon unto herself. She played the nightmare in Voggoth’s dreams.

  Nina emerged from the shadow of the vat and spied her attackers looming over head. They, in turn, descended in a glowing yellow picket line.

  Nina squeezed the trigger on her M4 and again met their charge with bullets; a furious barrage of bullets. She felt the heat from her over-worked weapon; she smelled the burning metallic aroma of cartridges firing one after another after another.

  Pop-splash. Pop-splash. Pop-splash.

  A light rain of acid drizzled to the warehouse floor as her rifle dispatched the remaining orbs. Yet her victory felt pyrrhic as the battle computer inside her head realized the cost: she had expended the last 5.56 round in her possession..

  The twin Mac-11s on her shoulders, a threesome of grenades, and her thigh-mounted Desert Eagle stood ready but nothing to feed the Colt…

  A legion of Monks and a pair of muscle-bound Ogres awaited The Bishop’s orders in the dark hall outside his command chambers. The emerald-eyed fiend took great pleasure in what was to come and like all of Voggoth’s creations he understood that only pain-as acute as possible-could satiate his Master’s desires.

  “’Go,” he commanded the mutated humans in robes, “go and purify her with your blades.”

  The Monks drew the short pikes that passed for swords and marched south, first slow and then faster-faster-with the evil enthusiasm of a crazed mob…

  Nina gazed at her rifle. It nearly glowed with heat, but even the radiation of the barrel could not match the heat of anger firing in her heart. The Bishop still waited. The creature responsible for her loss. The one who had used her as a tool against the man she loved. The root of the death and destruction delivered unto her world.

  He will not escape.

  At the far side of the chamber a long wide portal opened. A line of silhouettes raced into the room. She saw the flaps of their robes as they ran. Their numbers-100 strong-stretched from one side of the chamber to the other. Behind that fast-moving vanguard lumbered a pair of slower Ogres.

  Trevor’s voice came to her as clearly as if he stood next to her in that darkness. The words he had said to her at the mansion; after the last meeting.

  “Go after them, Nina.”

  She would not wait. No retreat. No defense. No escape. The only thing Nina had known all her life presented the only remaining option.

  Attack.

  She dropped the M4 and drew her sword. Her eyes narrowed, her brow furled, and Nina ran at them. She ran with every ounce of speed her legs could muster. The black beret flew off and her ponytail fluttered behind.

  Fifty feet…

  The monks with their swords increased their speed in response to her charge. The sound of their pounding footfalls created a steady beat like an unstoppable tide rolling to shore. Their wide line condensed into a mob as they neared their target.

  Thirty feet…

  Nina grasped the hilt in a death-grip. The sword she had taken from a Mutant; the day she had met Denise. It hung behind her and to the side as she leaned forward in eagerness to meet her fate. She ran even faster. Her heart raced like a drum played by the devil.

  Ten feet…

  She saw the once-human rotting faces with splotches of red and green and flakes of skin hanging like scales. Their damned eyes locked on to her and knew only that they must hurt and wound and kill because that was all any creature of Voggoth could possibly desire. A destiny Nina once thought she shared but now she knew more. She understood more. And she would fight for it.

  Nina jumped. She jumped like an Olympic hurdler, passing over the first enemy swings, landed behind the vanguard and in the midst of the mob, and she kept running, swinging as she moved with the momentum of her charge behind the arc of the blade. No consideration for defense. No blocks. No attempt to parry. Nothing but attack-attack-attack.

  A head rolled free; a robe fell limp; an arm holding an alien rapier flew through the air. And still Nina darted through the sea of attackers, dropping her shoulders and swinging; leaping forward and thrusting. Everything in the blade. Nothing but attack!

  Their counter-thrusts hit air as if trying to puncture a ghost. Enemy swords clanged against enemy swords where she had stood just a blink ago. Nina refused to stop, instead sweeping onward like a farmer’s scythe reaping harvest.

  The bodies dropped around her in a line of dominoes knocked asunder. Yet more moved in with the Bishop’s orders of purification dictating tactics.

  She felt the tip of one sword rip across her shoulder. Before a single drop of blood came from the laceration she had slain three more.